August Camping Adventures, Part 3: Marvelous Mackinac

August was extraordinarily mild this year; September is giving it its vengeance.  As I sit gazing at my brown, crusty lawn and the baking concrete of the street in early September, I dream of our August in northern Michigan.  This was my third trip to Mackinac Island.  I had wanted to see the Grand Hotel since I saw the ghostly Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve wander the halls of it in Somewhere In Time.  An island with a strong Native American history, some mystery, and no cars appealed enormously to my inner 17-year-old.  Plus, I adore red geraniums, the symbol of the island.

I finally got the chance to go when I worked for a bus tour company out of Chicago.  I was the junior/assistant/flunkie-in-training to the experienced tour director, and it was on the moonlit, rocky beach on Mackinac that the poor woman broke the news that perhaps my lazy-assed 22-year-old self was not well-suited for the grueling half-circus clown/half-adult babysitter job of tour director.  I swallowed the news with little remorse, but forever grateful that Mackinac Island was my last stop.  We stayed at the gorgeous Mission Point resort and had high tea at the Grand Hotel.  I was in heaven.  A friend of mine has since told me that she was one of the very few lucky people to have gone to college at Mackinac College during the three years it was open, the site of which became Mission Point.  When the college closed its doors and students had to enroll elsewhere, my friend had to prepare with a mid-winter standardized test in neighboring St. Ignace.  She had to get there by snowmobile!

My second trip to Mackinac was a couple of years ago, when my in-laws were visiting the U.S., and we did the Lake Michigan Circle Tour.  Severe tendinitis in my foot had left me in a surgical boot for most of the summer, so Mackinac Island was a long sit-down on a bench admiring Lake Huron while everyone else explored the island on bicycles or shopped the port area on foot.  Although I was envious, we still somehow managed to sneak by the $10 charge to climb onto the longest porch in the world at the Grand Hotel, and we enjoyed seeing the Wheelmen, a group of Victorian-era bicycle riders, and a 19^th century baseball game was in progress in the park as we strolled/limped by.

So, for the third time, I climbed onto the ferry and into the glorious sunshine that always seems to pour onto Mackinac Island.  I tried to explain to my niece why Mackinaw City was spelled with a “w” and Mackinac Island was with a “c”, but they were pronounced the same way.  I thought that a French speaker would understand a silent “c” at the end, but she still seemed a bit confused.  No matter, today we would conquer the island on bicycle, survive the August throngs of tourists, load up on fudge and ice cream calories, and enjoy the views from every angle.

We bypassed the horse-drawn carriage tour (it’s informative about the history of the island and fun, but all in English, which might be a bit challenging for someone just learning the language), found a hole-in-the-wall hamburger place for lunch, then set off to rent bikes.  The route around the island was surprisingly easy until we branched off to bike up to the center.  My legs and hips screamed in agony, and I walked my bike part of the way up, but I made it!  The hill down was a bit scary, but I felt like a kid again with the wind in my hair, dodging piles of horse manure and wayward tourists.

As we headed for the ferry at the end of the day, the skies opened up and it began to rain.  Mackinac is even charming in the rain, and our ferry ride went under the Mackinac Bridge to cross from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan on its way back to the mainland.

August Camping Adventures, Part 2: Dreadfully Unprepared

Some background:

1.           We are always ALWAYS unprepared.  For everything.  Even when we think we’re prepared.

2.          We’re camping minimalists.  Well, my husband is, and so I am forced to be.  And because we don’t have an SUV or minivan, well…space, or lack thereof, rules.  That means washing old and small aluminum plates and cups, instead of toting paper plates.  That means small camping chairs.  That means no beach toys.  That means 10 days with the same towel.  That means taking the tiny camp stove apart each time to transport it.  That means re-using instead of disposables.  How eco, you might say.  How quaint.  Truth is, even to get our minimalist gear into a Jetta wagon, it’s like a nightmare 3-D jigsaw puzzle.  To grab lunch on the road or a snack out of the cooler, we have to unpack and repack every time.

3.          Here is a picture of our car, packed to the gills, to prove my point.

It gets really good mileage, our car.  We might even save money on vacations, what with camping vs. hotels, re-use of our aluminum plates, and lower fuel costs.  If only it weren’t for the ice cream.  I looked at our credit card bill for the month, and we spent $53.72 in ice cream.  I kid you not.

I was bound and determined not to be unprepared this time.  After all, we had two days to prepare, my husband would be home during that time, and everyone could chip in.  We bought an extra tent, some new and nicer camping chairs, and a real air mattress and pump.  We cleaned out the camping box and replaced old items and added in fresh bug spray, fresh kitchen towels, fresh sunscreen, an all-purpose iron pot and some decent utensils.  We would pack up the car the evening before, and be all set to go early Saturday morning.

Trouble is, life got in the way, and we forgot about getting the house ready to be empty for 10 days, and we wanted some down time before getting on the road for so many hours, and our itinerary kept changing and changing…and on Saturday morning, we were bickering and unpacking and repacking the car, eliminating items, stacking towels and pillows in the space between the two backseat passengers, complaining about who forgot to buy ice for the gigantic cooler.

To say that my niece was a good sport was an understatement.  In my previous post, I admitted my fondness for the creature comforts (OK, really what matters most to me is just a real mattress and indoor plumbing, preferably closer than 50 feet away).  At 17, I would have been unbearably miserable, and probably would have made everyone else feel so too by the end of the trip.  But Aude seemed to bear up well to whatever new thing she encountered.  Starting out two hours late, complete with requisite bickering?  No problem.  Eight hours in the back of a small car with a 10-year-old?  “I’m getting used to long distances” was her response.  First night having to learn how to put up a tent in the dark with clouds of mosquitoes swarming and no light, since we forgot to replace the mantle on our ancient gas lantern?  All smiles, and how do I put up the tent, and please pass the bug spray.

The first night was spent in a campground in central Michigan.  Sites were small, but it seemed to be the party campground; the guy who brought us our wood had been spotted earlier wearing a balloon hat and carting kids on a wagon ride; there was a potluck and a DJ.  We just wanted to set up and get food. Aude’s aim to speak only English dissolved into us barking orders to each other in French.  As my husband understands somewhat my camping aversion, we have come up with a mutually agreeable distribution of labor:  he sets up the tents while I make a fire and prepare food.  Or dig something out of the cooler to make sure we don’t starve, which is closer to the truth.  We finally sat down to sandwiches and a makeshift veggie salad at 10:30. Exhausted, we sat around the fire until way too late, and Aude learned how to avoid scorching the bottom of her shoes on the campfire ring while chatting with us about her future life plans.

And then, comes the unprepared part.  You see, we didn't even think to look up the weather forecast.  Nope.  My husband and I would share a light comforter if needs be, but he had the idea he would get by on a thin wool blanket.  It's August!  It's hot!  Except when it's 48 degrees at night.  We spooned and shivered, thankful that at least the kids had thick sleeping bags.  We would need to stop at a store to get more protection from the elements.

We had to pack up at warp speed in the morning in order to make our scheduled stop in Mackinaw City.  We found a welcoming campground there, right on the beaches of lake Huron, with a nice camp store, pool, and hot showers.  We walked in Mackinaw City, found a camp store, and bought a sleeping bag.  We caught the tail end of a Native American Trading post reinactment.  We went back to the campsite late in the afternoon; the kids managed to enjoy the pool and Patrice and I went for a walk on the beach.  We had cold beer, night wildlife, a tiny-but-enjoyable campfire.  And I actually managed to make the camp stove produce a pasta-spinach-feta dish I invented on the spot.  If we bathed ourselves in bug spray, life was good.  We would set off for Mackinac Island the next day.

If we could get all the stuff back in the car to drive to the dock, that is.

August Camping Adventures, Part 1: My Dirty Little Secret

Yesterday was the first time we’ve Skyped with Aude since she returned to France.  She was yawning at 9:30 at night, and I have no doubt that she’s jumped right into school and social life with gusto since leaving last Sunday night from Chicago.  How could a month go by so quickly, and yet the beginning of the month seems like a lifetime ago?

My travel adventures changed drastically after I returned home from Europe at the end of July.  The first week was a blur of jet lag, laundry, and preparing for my friend Raigan’s visit.  She came with her boys down from her parents’ house in the Chicago suburbs; I felt so lucky to see her twice this summer:  once in her home and Frankfurt, and once when she made her annual trip home to the U.S.  We visited a mutual friend, we had long chats, we invited friends over and the kids ran around together like they had been friends forever.

Two days after she left we would pack up the car and travel north to camp for 10 days in Michigan and Wisconsin.  The last thing I felt like doing was packing.  I actually felt a bit sick when I pulled my toiletry case down from the shelf.  Again.

And…can I tell you my dirty little secret?  I hate camping.

I’ve tried to like it for a long time.  My parents and I never went camping together; my mother refused.  She grew up in a rural area and in a farmhouse that didn’t get electricity until she was 18 years old.  She insists that she was camping for 18 years, and didn’t consider camping as a vacation.  I didn’t feel like I was missing anything until my good friend in early high school years convinced me that I needed that experience:  sleeping outdoors, the smell of camp coffee in the morning, s’mores, campfires and all your clothes smelling like wood smoke.  That all sounded fine and dandy, so I bought a sleeping bag and a duffel bag for my clothes (which would double as my pillow—how outdoorsy I was!), and got myself invited on the family vacation to Door County, Wisconsin.  Becky’s parents had a customized van which they slept in, and Becky, another friend Carole, and I would sleep in the tent.  With flashlights!  And giggling!  Just like a slumber party, but outside in the woods!  My tent-mates made fun of my inexperienced packing (hair doo-dads to match my totally impractical outfits, especially; hey, it was the early ‘80s), but I was not deterred.  This would be absolute fun.

The first night we did all the things.  The s’mores over the campfire, the ghost stories, the pitter-patter of little animals’ feet in our campsite.  And then it started to rain.  Not just a little sprinkle, but a real, honest-to-god gully-washer.  When I realized a veritable river was running between the tarp on the ground and the floor of our tent—soaking every hair doo-dad, sleeping bag, duffel bag and inch of clothing on my person—the honeymoon was over.  I announced to whomever was listening that I would be sleeping in the van with B’s parents.  Everyone laughed.  I begged.  Everyone laughed harder, and then suggested I get some sleep in my soggy bedclothes.  We spent the next day at the Laundromat instead of the beach; we amused ourselves by buying Brides magazines and telling each other our families’ geneologies.

OK, so parts of it were fun.  Carole getting sunburnt everywhere except for my handprints on her shoulders where I had put the 15SPF sunscreen.  Making a life-sized sand mermaid on the beach, instead of the more traditional sand castle (the effect was even more outstanding when we found a cigarette butt to stick between her lips).  Standing on the picnic table after dinner, trying not to move or sneeze, waiting for the skunks which had invaded the campsite to leave.  My very first Wisconsin fish boil.  Early morning delectable cinnamon rolls from the neighboring bakery.  But it didn’t take me long to realize I could have had most of these fun experiences while sleeping on a real bed.

But I didn’t stop there.  Car camping expanded to the Rockies with my now husband, who did [or didn’t] propose to me over a beer in a lodge which we couldn’t afford to stay in; he also may [or may not] have proposed to me in the campground later.  Undisputed was the fact that we had spent a couple of very cold nights at 9000 ft. in a rudimentary campground while listening to bears rustle around outside our tent as we tried in vain to breathe and sleep. 

I was still trying to like camping when we did a six-day, 100-kilometer hike up and down the slave trails of Brazil’s Chapada Diamantina on our four-month honeymoon.  It was the kind of camping where you don’t have the air pump to pump up your jumbo air mattress.  It was the kind of camping where you might have to get up in the middle of the night, grab your tent, and run up the mountainside in the dark to avoid being swept away into the waterfall.  It was the kind of camping where you bathe in freezing cold mountain streams, where you can’t use shampoo or soap, where if you say you need to go to the bathroom, you’re handed a small shovel.

That trip didn’t endear me to camping either.  But I didn’t stop.

The closest I was to stopping camping was when we emerged from our tent in beautiful southern Illinois one morning, all proud of ourselves for taking our four-month-old baby on his first camping trip, only to discover a gigantic tick sucking the life-blood out of our infant, right there on his bald little head.

I didn’t want to go camping for a while.

But then a few years ago we met these wonderful people, all families with their kids about the same age as ours in our fabulous day care.  And they camp.  For fun.  Together.  And so, we have been camping together for a few years now. We haven’t stopped, despite our son sitting down in the campfire one year and getting third-degree burns.  We haven’t stopped, despite surviving rain and 100-degree temps.  We just keep camping.  As usual, we made our reservations with them in February or March this year for a few days’ stay at the campground at Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin.  And when Aude decided to come to the U.S., we knew that part of her adventure would be camping with us.  For better or for worse.

More camping adventures to follow.

Checking in...

After…

10 days

9 times re-loading the Jetta wagon to the gills

8 ice-cream cones

7 showers

6 campfires

5 beer runs

4 campgrounds

3 nights in a proper bed (thanks to Regina and her mother Ann, and the front desk lady at the Microtel in Janesville)

2 pounds of Mackinac Island fudge

1 [missed] sunset over Lake Michigan

…I am exhausted.  Will be blogging about our camping adventures soon…

Coming Home

I’ve now arrived back home, and had a fairly uneventful car/train/plane/plane trip from France (with the exception of getting my bag searched at O’Hare because the foil wrappings enrobing the enormous amount of chocolate I was bringing back created a suspicious image on their machine), and am recovering from jet lag quite nicely.  I enjoyed witnessing my niece's first take-off and landing; I’ve shown her the highlights of our town, fed her the biggest ice cream sundae she’s ever seen, and set up a language-exchange cake-making outing for her.  I realize that soon we’ll embark on our journey in the Midwest, and I want to vicariously enjoy her experiences here, so I’d better wrap up my own trip abroad; subject, of course, to change.

So…what have I missed?

There was the trip to the lake in La Ferté-Bernard, where there was a nice little beach and tons of games for the kids.  Audrey and Sebastian met us there with their little girls Pauline and Julie.  On the way Aurélie and Gaël were fussing with their grandmother about allowing them to keep the windows wide open as we sped along the highway; when their grandmother threatened to stop the car and let them walk, Gaël crossed his arms in front of himself and said in a perfect French accent, “C’est pas marrent.”  “That’s not funny.”  He can certainly speak French quite well when he puts his mind to it.

Cousins

There was Amy and Stefaan’s visit to Marolles-les-Braults.  Amy had “dragged” me on a long, hot walk on country roads around Kessel-Lo when we visited her in Belgium, a walk that would theretofore be referred to as the Kessel-Lo Death March.  I teased her that the favor had been returned when my in-laws drove us to the town of Bellême and around the countryside near their former farm in scorching temps, and I called it the “Orne Death March.” 

First stop in Orne, picnic at L'Etang de la Herse; the boys posed for an "album cover" moment

Amy enjoying the old section of Bellême

The following day we went on the “Marolles-les-Braults Death March”; I guess we had to one-up them!  I did discover a park and a recreation center that I had no idea existed in that tiny town, so I guess it was worthwhile.  Amy’s three boys and Gaël chose the walnut tree in the back yard as their retreat from the heat; they dragged out water bottles, pillows, books and snacks, claiming it was cooler up in the leafy boughs than anywhere else.  

Gaël, Felix, and Gillis hiding further up

Marie-Claire and Joël came for dinner on Sunday, and we spent the day as most French people spend their Sundays:  at the table.  Marie-Claire is always so much fun, and we talked and laughed despite the smothering heat.  Amy managed to convince Stefaan to stop at Giverny, the Monet house and gardens that inspired all those water-lily paintings, on their way back to Belgium.  That place is definitely going on my list for next time.

And…speaking of lists for next time…not sure when “next time” will be.  My mother-in-law always says the house seems too empty after we leave, and even more so when we’ve been there long enough to become part of the daily rhythm.  She told me not to strip the bed or neaten up the bedroom, she wanted to leave it the way it was for a while; I smiled and assured her I wasn’t dying, I was just going home.  I have to go home, I said, so I can come back.

And come back I will.  I have more friends to visit in Germany and Spain, have been told about places I must visit in England and Scotland, and I realized with people visiting Marolles that there are so many places in France I still need to see.  (At some point, I really need to have a Purely Paris trip as well, since so many people assume that’s what I’m referring to when I say I’m going to France).

It seems that, exhausting though it may be, this mid-life crisis travel thing is pretty addictive.  I may not have any money left after it’s all said and done, but I’ll certainly have plenty of photos. 

And memories.

Up, Up and Away

We couldn’t have had a better send-off.  Really.  It was worth the limited amount of sleep before our 6:00 am next-day departure; worth the hour-long ride each way in the back seat on tiny, twisty roads; worth the mosquito bites; worth ignoring the backdrop of family drama, which I will spare you from sharing; worth using up my camera battery and space on my card for the videos; worth long conversations with the great-grandmas in their 90s whose long-departed logic I often have trouble deciphering, especially in a second language.

In French, a hot-air balloon is called une montgolfière, named after the brothers Montgolfier who designed the first one in 1782. The concept is simple, really; hot air rises, so if you heat air inside a container, called the envelope, it will rise.  No special gas is needed, just air, a fan, a basket, a burner, a balloon, and some strong cables and ropes.  The envelope—the balloon part—is made of a delicate nylon material, sewn in sections with double seams like those in your favorite pair of Levis.  The balloon is extended on the ground, attached firmly to the basket, which is lying on its side.  A gasoline-powered fan fills the envelope until it’s partially aloft, then the burner is turned on intermittently until the air inside becomes hot.  The balloon eventually rises vertically, pulling the basket upright with it.  It’s then ready for passengers.  The pilot applies the burner gradually until the balloon rises off the ground.  The balloon is then subject to the winds of chance, and the pilot is followed by a co-pilot on the ground, who chases after it like a storm-chaser.  The trick, of course, is knowing when to allow the air in the envelope to cool so the balloon descends softly in a wide-open area free of trees and sharp things on the ground.  Hot-air balloon pilots know to avoid things like recently harvested colza fields, for example; the plant which is the source of canola oil has sharp stalks which could easily pierce the delicate nylon.

My husband’s first cousin, Audrey, and her husband Sébastien built their own hot-air balloon, piecing it together in their small apartment in Toulouse.  Somehow they found the time between Audrey’s job as a civil engineer and Sébastien’s aeronautical engineering work for Airbus, and raising two small daughters, to sew the envelope by hand.  They bought the basket from Monsieur de Montgolfier, a direct descendant of the original inventors!  Last week they took a well-deserved vacation by renting a gite—a small vacation rental home—in the Perche.  They invited my in-laws and Gaël and me, Audrey’s two grandmothers, and Gaël’s cousin Aurélie to come for a cookout dinner and a demonstration of how they put the balloon in the air.  We helped to attach ropes and hooks, and even though we were well-prepared by Sébastien, we all jumped with the noise and blast of the burner.  Although it was too complicated to actually give us a ride, we got to see the whole process of how it goes up, and the kids went in the basket for a tiny lift-off at the end.  We were lucky to have no wind and fairly cool evening temperatures, allowing a flawless show.  Bravo to Audrey and Sébastien; their energy and passion for this sport was fabulous to watch.

Dinner outside

Step one:  remove basket from the trailer

While the great-grandmothers and Ginette look on

Everybody gets involved

Even the two 10-year-olds

Slowly the envelope fills

And it's up!

And then....you have to put it all back together again

I couldn’t have imagined a better way to end my seven weeks in Europe.

Random Things Part 2

It has been the worst weather I’ve ever experienced in France.  And I’ve experienced biting wind that pierces your toughest winter jacket, snow up above my boot-tops (in the Alps), suffocating fog lasting for days on end, and grey dreariness that clouds your soul.  But I have never experienced this all-encompassing heat that sucks every bit of energy from you within minutes of feeling its nasty breath.  In central Illinois we complain about the humidity, but here the laundry dries on the line in an hour, even jeans; but the air still manages to feel heavy and oppressive, and storm clouds threaten on the horizon.  I would live in the basement if I could, the only place that’s marginally cool in the house.  There’s no air-conditioning.  André and Ginette don’t even own a fan; Ginette said she didn’t want to waste money on one, since they’re only useful for a few days a year.  We open and close windows, doors, and shutters, avoiding the light, trying to find a whiff of breeze.  It’s been like this for almost two weeks.

My mother- and father-in-law are both fairly progressive, modern people.  They have email, a cell phone, a GPS.  But what is always surprising to me is their old-world beliefs and habits.  The drafts, for example; if you get a cold or bronchitis, it’s because you were sitting in a draft.  And god forbid if you should sit in a draft with a wet shirt!  It will most certainly kill you!  Even doctors advise their patients to avoid drafts!  In 2013!  So when we sit at the table in sweltering heat, we can’t open certain windows or doors, because it will create a deadly draft.  So we cook in our own sweat.  And for some reason, it’s not good to sit under a walnut tree, either.  They give off toxins that are terribly bad for you.  (I’ll readily admit, I can’t grow a garden under my black walnut tree, but the only ill effects I’ve noticed by sitting under one is the hazards of squirrels and birds with unpredictable aim.)

Then there are the moon phases.

Everything grown under the ground should be planted in a waxing phase, and above the ground in a waning phase.  Any surgery or intervention should happen in a waning phase, lest you have complications or infections.  A full moon can be responsible for anything from bad weather to insomnia to irritable pet behavior.  In turn, storms are announced by biting flies, stinky dogs, and the arrival of tiny biting insects that I don’t know the name for in English.

Indigestion of any sort is most certainly a sign of a liver affliction.  In fact, many expressions that we have in English about being “sick to your stomach” can be translated into French as being “sick to your liver.”  I guess in a place where there’s an aperitif before lunch, wine with lunch, a beer in the afternoon, an aperitif before dinner, wine with dinner (or often hard cider and wine in this region), then sometimes a digestif of eau de vie, the brandy made with apples or peaches or pears, affairs of the liver should not be taken lightly.

I’m sure there will be more random observations in my last two days in France, plus more about touring the local haunts during Amy and Stefaan's visit last weekend, but I’d better sign off for now; I’m sitting in a draft.

 

Amy's family, cousin Marie-Claire and her husband Joël, and my in-laws sitting at the table; see how we're sweating?